Witness Says Menendez Brothers Pressured to Tape Confession

By Alan Abrahamson
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

Psychologist L. Jerome Oziel often said that he needed to "control" Lyle
and Erik Menendez, and pressured them to tape-record an incriminating
therapy session, his former lover testified Monday at the brothers' murder
trial.

With defense lawyers seeking to diminish the impact of the Dec. 11, 1989,
tape-recording, played in court last Friday, Oziel's ex-lover, Judalon
Smyth, testified that he told her he "needed to get them to say
incriminating things on a tape so we would have the tape to protect us."

Smyth said the therapist gave the brothers a different story: that they
could make a tape to "prove to a jury that, you know, they were remorseful
or whatever."

Called as a witness by the defense in a continuing bid to discredit Oziel,
Smyth produced perhaps the most bizarre day of testimony in the 17-week
trial as she described her relationship with the married Oziel. She even
played tapes of her own -- made secretly during their stormny affair --
opening up for jurors their sex life, her dress size and even his Elvis
Presley impersonation.

Smyth also tried to explain why she had gone from being the person who
turned in the brothers -- tipping police to their therapy sessions with
Oziel -- to now testifying for the defense. She dismissed her past
statements damaging to the brothers by saying that she had been
"brainwashed" by Oziel.

The brothers testified at length at the trial that they killed their
parents in fear and self-defense after years of physical, emotional and
sexual abuse.

On the Dec. 11 tape, however, they told Oziel that they killed their mother
to put her "out of her misery" and that their father deserved to die
because his infidelity had led to that misery. There was no mention of
abuse or self-defense in the taped therapy session.